1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to a semiconductor integrated circuit, and more particularly to a semiconductor apparatus with an open bit line structure.
2. Related Art
A bit line sense amplifier of a semiconductor memory apparatus such as a dynamic random access memory (DRAM) is an important circuit in the semiconductor memory apparatus because the bit line sense amplifier primarily amplifies a small signal difference occurring in a bit line due to charge sharing between a memory cell and the bit line after the memory cell is accessed.
In general, a bit line structure of a semiconductor memory apparatus may be classified into an open bit line structure and a folded bit line structure.
A semiconductor memory apparatus with the open bit line structure includes a bit line and a complementary bit line (or an inverted bit line) extending in an opposite direction from a bit line sense amplifier.
A semiconductor memory apparatus with the folded bit line structure includes a bit line and a complementary bit line extending in parallel with the bit line and each coupled to a bit line sense amplifier. The bit line and the complementary bit line form a bit line pair.
The semiconductor memory apparatus with the open bit line structure can include more memory cells than the semiconductor memory apparatus with the folded bit line structure. Thus, the semiconductor memory apparatus with the open bit line structure has been recently used.